Infinite Loop —

Details about iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4 and prerelease iTunes 8.2

The latest beta of iPhone OS 3. inside.

Apple has seeded the fourth beta of the next version of its mobile operating system, iPhone OS 3.0, to registered iPhone developers. While there appears to be no major API changes and so far only one minor change revealed in the OS itself, the beta comes with an as-yet-unreleased version of iTunes that contains several new iPhone-related features and a possible hint of future Blu-ray support.

Among the very minor API changes, a few properties associated with UIKit were updated to be nonatomic. According to one developer we spoke with, this change optimizes variables that are not designed to be accessed by multiple threads, and can result in some speed improvements since it removes the overhead associated with locking and unlocking the variables. Also, search controller support has been added to UIViewController, which is related to the new system-wide search capabilities in iPhone OS 3.0.

In the OS itself, the new setting option for "Store" in the Settings app—which appeared in previous beta versions of iPhone OS 3.0—now has an associated icon as well as a couple actual settings. One allows signing in or out of the iTunes Store using your Apple ID. The other loads basic account information in a Web view, allowing you to change your payment details or redeem a promo code. The iTunes Store app has a built-in UI for redeeming codes for songs under the Downloads tab, but the App Store app has no such UI for redeeming promo codes for apps.

The real meat of the changes comes with the pre-release version of iTunes 8.2 included with the latest SDK download. First, sync settings now allow encryption of iPhone back-ups. One developer told Ars that the feature also appears in iTunes 8.1 when syncing an iPhone or iPod touch with an iPhone OS 3.0 beta installed. However, the iPhone OS still doesn't appear to include any way to encrypt user data on the iPhone itself, like FileVault does on Mac OS X.

Also, iTunes 8.2 finally supports Notes syncing, though a notice under the Notes tab indicates that Mac OS X 10.5.7 is required to support the syncing. The requirement suggests release of the 10.5.7 update is imminent, which is supported by what we've heard from other sources.

Finally, the About box for iTunes 8.2 includes references to a bag of hurt Blu-ray disc compatibility. The reference is to the Gracenote database, which iTunes has long used to automatically grab artists, album, and track information for CDs. Gracenote's database has been updated to also include information for DVDs and Blu-ray discs, so the reference could merely be updated legalese required by Gracenote. Or—hope against hope—it could signal upcoming support for Blu-ray in new Macs. However, the iTunes application and resources don't contain any other reference to Blu-ray whatsoever.

The few changes to the APIs suggest that the bulk of the work left for the iPhone OS engineering team will be finding and squashing bugs in the next few months. Apple is expected to reveal the final version of iPhone OS 3.0, as well as new iPhone hardware, in just over a month from now at its Worldwide Developers Conference in June.